A grand concert for South Shore jazz festival

Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune

Chicago trumpeter Obert Davis, photographed at a Nov. 13, 2015, performance, will lead his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble on Jan. 16, 2016, at the South Shore Cultural Center to raise funds for a nonprofit seeking to revive the South Shore jazz festival.

Chicago trumpeter Obert Davis, photographed at a Nov. 13, 2015, performance, will lead his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble on Jan. 16, 2016, at the South Shore Cultural Center to raise funds for a nonprofit seeking to revive the South Shore jazz festival. (Brian Nguyen / Chicago Tribune)

How do you revive the South Shore jazz festival? Put on a concert by Orbert Davis' CJP

For more than three decades, Chicagoans flocked to the South Shore Cultural Center each summer to hear jazz at the most spectacular outdoor setting possible: the lakefront.

But the South Shore jazz festival, which Chicago impresario Geraldine de Haas created in 1981 and nurtured as an annual rite, was canceled in 2013. De Haas had moved to the East Coast to be close to her children; her nonprofit Jazz Unites Inc. organization no longer was active; and no one was able to keep the event alive.

This was a significant blow to the city's summertime jazz lineup, but now a group of Chicagoans has created the nonprofit South Side Jazz Coalition Inc. with the specific goal of reviving the South Shore jazz festival in August.

To raise funds for the cause, on Saturday night the organization will spotlight Chicago trumpeter Orbert Davis and his Chicago Jazz Philharmonic Chamber Ensemble at the South Shore Cultural Center performing one of Davis' most poetic works: "DuSable to Obama: Chicago's Black Metropolis." Davis originally penned the score for Barbara E. Allen and Daniel Andries' exquisitely crafted documentary film of the same name, Davis winning a richly deserved Emmy Award for his efforts.

To Davis, playing this music for the goal of reviving the South Shore festival carries particular meaning.

"I'm personally invested because I performed at that fest at least five or six times, when I first started playing on the jazz scene," says Davis.

"That was the first festival where I ever used strings. Geraldine was so creative and such a risk-taker.

"At that festival, you feel like the audience is on stage," adds Davis of an event that indeed erased practically any barriers between artist and listener. Fans could sit or stand just a few feet from the lip of the stage, the musicians routinely bantering with their admirers.

When the performers left the bandstand, "there's nowhere to go but through the audience," says Davis. "That's when you find out who your friends are."

The combination of the lakefront setting, the intimacy of the environment and the historic resonance of the location on the South Side — where jazz first took root in Chicago more than a century ago — made the festival a cherished event. Which is why leading Chicago musicians such as singer Sasha Daltonn and bassist Chuck Webb, plus other community activists, have been working to bring the great event back to life.

"This is very important to us," says Daltonn, who serves as vice president of the South Side Jazz Coalition.

"We're doing this (concert) mainly to introduce ourselves. … We're taking advantage of this opportunity to try to establish what we're doing in jazz here on the South Side."

The South Side Jazz Coalition, in other words, aims to stoke the flames of jazz in various neighborhood settings and contexts, with the annual jazz festival obviously the biggest opportunity of all — hence Saturday night's concert. Funds generated by the event "will be used to help fund the jazz festival," says Daltonn, whose organization also is seeking corporate sponsorships.

Certainly Daltonn, Webb and friends couldn't have picked a more appropriate attraction than Davis' "DuSable to Obama."

For starters, Davis several years ago expanded the film score for concert presentation, the music unfolding while sequences from the documentary flicker on screen. When I watched Davis and his musicians perform the work alongside film clips at the University of Chicago's Logan Center for the Arts in 2013, it was impossible not to be moved. The juxtaposition of Davis' sublimely lyrical score with scenes of slavery and the Great Migration and subsequent chapters of Chicago history proved all the more effective with the music played live.

Clearly the opportunity to tell Chicago's story in jazz — a music bound up with this city's history — stirred something deep within the composer.

"I saw these events flash before my eyes," says Davis. "I remember the afternoon Harold Washington died … I actually played at his funeral. So I personally can feel what our city went through. Not only his death, but his being elected mayor.

"And, of course, President Obama being elected. All these things I (felt) a great responsibility toward. But what an incredible opportunity to put (historic) events in this form."

The filmmakers chose well in picking Davis as composer for their documentary, Allen telling me in 2010 that Davis "was always the choice." Or, as Andries put it at the time of the broadcast premiere, "I realized what an extraordinary talent (Davis) is, what a great gift he has for visualization. A lot of his work sounds like a picture and a story. He writes cinematic."

The score, like the film itself, covers a vast swath of history, Davis' music ranging from vintage ragtime and ebullient swing to classic blues and more modern funk. For the concert version, Chicago singer-songwriter Maggie Brown performs poetry of Langston Hughes and Gwendolyn Brooks, adding further layers of meaning.

All of which seems ideally suited for an attempt to relaunch the South Shore jazz festival, as worthy a cause as any with which to start the new year.

"Portraits in Jazz":Howard Reich's e-book collects his interviews with Frank Sinatra, Lena Horne, Ella Fitzgerald and others, as well as profiles of early masters such as Louis Armstrong, Duke Ellington and Billie Holiday. Get "Portraits in Jazz" at www.chicagotribune.com/ebooks.

A version of this article appeared in print on January 15, 2016, in the On the Town section of the Chicago Tribune with the headline "A grand concert for South Shore jazz festival" —
Today's paperToday's paper | Subscribe